‘It’s music and we came to play instruments’: teaching for engagement in classroom music

ABSTRACT

This paper presents findings from ethnographic case study research that investigated teacher practices and student engagement in classroom music. The data collection was undertaken in a primary (elementary) and a secondary school in Australia and focussed on the classroom practice of two teachers and four classes of students aged 10 to 16 years. The two teachers invited to participate in the study had been identified as being influenced by the Musical Futures approach following their participation in a Musical Futures professional learning workshop. The findings draw on participant-observation of music lessons, interviews, and focus groups. From this research, a model of teaching for engagement in classroom is proposed. This paper discusses three over-arching themes that comprise the model, illustrated with classroom snapshots from secondary Year 10 and Year 7 music classes and primary Year 5/6 music classes.

KEYWORDS:

• Music education
• pedagogy
• engagement
• Musical Futures
• informal learning

Disclosure statement

No potential competing interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Four chord songs were made famous by the Axis of Awesome, an Australian musical comedy group, who created a medley of 72 songs that use the same I V vi IV chords (see Youtube.com).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a Melbourne Research Scholarship, The University of Melbourne.

Notes on contributors

Emily Wilson

Emily Wilson is a senior lecturer in music education at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne. She lectures in music education and teacher education at undergraduate and postgraduate level. She has over 15 years of experience as a music educator. Her research interests include arts education pedagogy and curriculum, student engagement, engaging teacher practice, informal and formal learning in music education.